Summer air music drift. What’s that from, where’s it from; it’s saxophone practice must be because it’s slow awkward and halting et cetera it’s from that slanting down sagging apart tiny empty blue house forever; but somehow it something I’ll remember one day too. That house there with that worn-out sign once shouting DOCTOR SAX MUSIC STUDIO—ALL INSTRUMENTS inside that rusted solid chain link all around we know the place boy we go past quite often but what’s wrong with the place? For years it’s been nothing but now this music says it is; sure, there’s never been sax there but someday there will be or maybe there once was and the wind must have hit me just right today to bring both together and that’s probably why we’re hearing it now. It’s just one more mystery we’ll never answer because it’s not worth it...

I have to admit to a certain squeamishness when asked about my political affiliations. Part of this is due to the fact that my political beliefs are, at least as far as I am concerned, complicated. Another variable is that I’ve never been a joiner. Group dynamics have always made me uncomfortable because, very often, the consciousness that develops within the group conflicts with my individual consciousness to which I always defer. I also don’t like to be pigeonholed. I don’t want assumptions to be made about what I believe and what I support by virtue of my group assignation. I like to make up my own mind based on the available evidence.

During the mid-sixties, I lived in a little town called Snarfleburg in southern Tennessee. I found a job there labouring in the Apple Mines. Snarfleburg was a backwater town at that time, and few people recognised me. It was custom and law in the town for every citizen to be ultra-polite and encouraging to their fellow man. Town folk would always greet me with abundant jolliness, and perhaps say something like: ‘I hope every step you take today Sir, will be a step towards justice and righteousness’, or—‘May your sperm be praiseworthy and impregnate the air we breathe’. Me, being of a slightly reserved, conservative nature would usually just acquiesce with a ‘Hello’.

The town charter stated the following: ‘All citizens must be polite at all times, regardless of current mood, personal circumstance, or given situation’. This law was enforced...

“Capitalist production begets, with the inexorability of a process of nature, its own negation. It is the negation of the negation.” – Karl Marx cited by Engels, F. Anti-Dühring (1877)

The nineteenth century was an age of glorious optimism in the industrial nations. Liberals, anarchists and socialists thought that the future was a wonderful prospect. The Paris Commune had illuminated the imagination of rebels. Charles Darwin had liberated many people from superstition. Technology had developed fast. Grand ideologies like Marxism seemed to have coherence and the welfare state gained momentum in Germany. English hegemony over Ireland was on the wane. The patriarchy was also being questioned. But the twentieth century showed...

The hen circle graces Francois’ Five Star restaurant at two pm, grey sweatpants and hoodies taking their places among suits and ties. Nobody tells them about the dress code or the specials. The street outside seems to darken as they take their seats.

Tabby starts. “Okay, now that we’re all here, does anyone have anything they’d like us to address?”

Phyl sticks her hand up, avoiding the passing CEO of fourteen cigarette companies by mere inches. He scurries away like a crab, his head bowed low. Tabby nods.

This review was originally presented in speech form at the book’s launch in Dublin, May 2018

It’s a great honour to be asked to speak about this book, which, like its author, is exceptional. I mean both David and his book are exceptional in the sense of brilliant—but also in the sense of very strange.

The text announces its weirdness from the outset, opening with a series of different dialogues, in which several different and conflicting explanations for the same set of scars on the protagonist’s chest are offered. There is no narrator, the reader is left to chase truth themselves. These playful verbal back and forths immediately call to mind the good-natured dominance...

All the way from the renaissance and that lasting ripple
And of course the ancients—learning, discerning deceits
Those sinister sorts of questioned character—Marlowean intrigue
The real stories, life and death, history and mine—the eye
I was born scorned and a strong hypothesis, born forsworn
Endowed—a great mind, but then you find slip and transgression
Bedded and barter—food from the larder
Feeding a service disappearing to ferment insurrection
Intelligence, ideologies and a bit of dodgy business along the way
Tested and weighed against the common sort—just read the reports
And later everyone finds your number, making their own inquests
That classic ruination of rumination—we all write alone
Forgetting one’s station, so few placations, and therein the implication
Unsavory company and brawling, stalling... too smart to be exploited
But they let me live to exploit myself—no one is backing down
Vile heretical conceit and a coroner’s report
With a reckoning left to whom may find concern

William S. Tribell is a multimedia artist. Perpetually nominated for fancy poetry awards, he has contributed to journals and magazines around the world. An oversexed ne’er-do-well starving artist type with erratic sleep patterns, a penchant for travel and selfish over-indulgence, Tribell blames most of his character flaws on not receiving enough hugs as a child. He thinks sushi is great, and his favorite color is green. @WSTribellhttps://www.instagram.com/williamtribell/

‘the rain falls
that had not been falling
and it is the same world...’
– George Oppen, Of Being Numerous.

Rain: my 95th favourite type of weather.
Doesn’t take much to remind me, sure it doesn’t,
now that I sing of all that I ever wasn’t
with very little song left in me? However,

before starting work, I walk past the Ilac,
freestanding in certainty, the whir of a street-
sweeper sucking up cigarette butts
down Henry Place, where a dreadlock-

ed junkie, face colour-bled, squats mid-shite
in a shuttered doorway, unmoved by the combined
reek of aerosol spray, weed and fish waft-
ing up from Moore Street on the wind

into morning traffic, where a Deliveroo cyclist
pedals through a red light, and Gardaí shuffle
by on patrol. I clock in, stand my daily post
at the Chapters Bookstore entrance, muffle

back yawns no Americano could quench,
eye each and every face that walks in,
my waterproof Timberlands planted firm.
The automatic doors stay stubbornly open,

a flow of air hissing across parquet tiles
to knock over the yellow ‘Caution Wet FloorTM’
folding sign as rainy footprints pool
their displeasure, like barcodes stamped to clear.

Tannoy blares Vivaldi in the morning and Bach
at noon, the sweet, dread chorus
of St. Matthew Passion a call to prayer for waifs
and strays to amble in, spillvodka in the kid’s

section; it doesn’t drown out the mid-afternoon
swarm of Toyota, Citroen and Skoda chariots
trampling after eternity. In March, Parnell’s crown
is bulldozed, ashtray-destitute, traffic lights

grinning a salutation at me with the green,
and give me the finger with the red.
“You’re only makin’ more work for yourself,”
my assistant manager grunts, shaking his head.

For sure, it’s Dublin’s answer to Times Square (circa ’72),
and twice as much of a shithole; even the iron shriek
of the Broombridge-bound LUAS is bandaged
in frost. But it’s only the rain that falls, adding acidic

wealth to the pavement once the tide ebbs back
to ground-level. I clock out at half six, switch my phone
on, thumb through notifications, go for a gargle
in Fibbers. Later, I’ll carry a shopping bag laden

with empties to the bottle-bank behind Tesco.
I’ll head home to you with the scraps of rain,
when I’m done with their shattering,
bone-weary now, and soaked to the skin.

Daniel Wade is a poet and playwright from Dublin. In January 2017, his play The Collector opened the 20th anniversary season of the New Theatre, Dublin. His spoken word album Embers and Earth, available for download on iTunes and Spotify, launched the previous October at the National Concert Hall. A prolific performer, Daniel has featured in festivals including Electric Picnic, Body and Soul, Culture Night and the West Belfast Festival. Daniel was the Hennessy New Irish Writing winner for April 2015 in The Irish Times, and his poetry has appeared in over two dozen publications since 2012.